To:HIS MOTHER AND HIS SISTERS MARIA AND ANNA

Published:First published in 1929 in the journalProletarskaya RevolyutsiyaNo. 2-3.

      Sent from Shushenskoye to Moscow.

      Printed from 
 the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 37,

      pages135-137.Translated:The Late George H. HannaTranscription\Markup:D. MorosPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.

December 10, 1897

Accordingto my estimate, Mother dearest, this letter
should arrive by Christmas. I have decided to send it off
by the first post and not wait until Sunday (I am used to
writing to you on Sundays). I have received a letter from
Gleb in which he says he has submitted an application for
permission to come to me for ten days during the holidays.
I hope he will get permission. It will give me great pleasure.
They have written from Tesinskoye that Zinaida Pavlovna
has been sentenced to three years’ exile in northern
gubernias, and that she is asking to be sent to Minusinsk
District.[1]I believe Nadezhda
Konstantinovna[2]intends to
do the same, although her sentence is not yet properly
known; it will probably be very much the same.

Ikiss you warmly,Yours,V. U.

Ihope that Mitya will be free by the time you receive
this letter. They are not likely to hold him
long.[5]

Iam now reading the French translation of Labriola’sEssays on the Materialistic Conception of History. It is a
very sensible and interesting
book.[3]The idea came to methat you ought to translate it. (The original is in Italian
and Kamensky inNovoye Slovosays that the French
translation is not very good. You would, of course, have to get
the original.) The book is in three parts: (1) In Memory
of the Communist Manifesto, (2) Historical Materialism
(the biggest part) and (3) Appendix: The Manifesto of the
Communist Party (translated into French by Laura
Lafargue). It goes-without saying that only the second part is
suitable for translation, andnot all of that(I have not yet
finished reading it). If something is left out, it will not by
any means detract from this extremely clever defence of
“our doctrine” (Labriola’s expression). I am writing to
St. Petersburg this very day to find out whether the writer
proposes using this material for the journal. You can either
get his opinion from N. K. (I am writing to her) or propose
directly to him that you start the
translation.[6]

Ireceived your letter of November 24 and the second
issue of the VyatkaReturns. Earlier I received theUlozheniyeandUstav[7]—I do not remember whether I
acknowledged them.

Yousay that “goods for Minusinsk arestillnot being
accepted from Moscow”. Perhaps they will soon be
accepted. Mark could probably find out. Books are no longer
urgent. Perhaps you can send them with someone coming
at Christmas or with the
girls[4]who intend to come here
(I am writing to Mother about them) or, eventually, with
someone else. If things are sent to Krasnoyarsk the delay
is, in any case, tremendous. If any book is needed for work,
I shall write and it can be sent by post. We had better wait
a while before using the carrier’s office.

Savchenko’sbook, it seems, is Peskovsky’s.

Programmadomashnego chteniyahas arrived; I have
looked at it, it is dull and I do not want to write a review.

Wolfe’slittle publication starts quite well and is
fabulously cheap.

Ihave ordered Seignobos. I do not intend to order Ziber
yet. If I get some money I shall probably order it, too.
Kalmykova’s bookshop gives me a discount of 15 per cent,
so I order books from there; it is convenient, too, because
it saves you trouble.

Allthe best,V. U.

[1]ZinaidaPavlovna Nevzorova.—Ed.

[2]NadezhdaKonstantinovna Krupskaya.—Ed. 
 —Lenin

[3]ForLenin’s opinion of the book seeCollected Works, Vol. 2,
p. 486.—Ed.

[4]Thegirls are Nadezhda Krupskaya and Zinaida Nevzorova.—Ed.

[5]Lenin’sbrother, Dmitry, was arrested on November 7, 1897,
in connection with the case of the Moscow Workers’ Union; he
was kept in prison until August 20, 1898, was expelled from
Moscow University and banished to Tula; later he was kept under
police surveillance in the town of Podolsk, Moscow Gubernia.

[6]Lenin’sletters to Struve and Krupskaya proposing the
publication of a translation of the second part of Antonio Labriola’sbook inNovoye Slovohave been lost. The translation appeared
in 1898 in St. Petersburg in an edition by Berezin and Semyonov;
it was given the titleK voprosu o materialisticheskom vzglyade
na istoriyu(On the Question of the Materialistic View of History).
The English title of this essay of Labriola’s isHistorical
Materialism.

[7]Thebooks referred to areUlozheniye o nakazaniyakh ugolovnykh
i ispravitelnykh(Ordinance on Criminal and Correctional
Penalties) andUstavo nakazaniyakh, nalagayemykh mirovymi sudyami(Code of Penalties Imposable by Magistrates). Lenin needed
these books for his work as a consulting lawyer in Shushenskoye.
He later recalled, “...when I was in exile in Siberia I had
occasion to act in the capacity of a lawyer. I was not a certified
lawyer, because, being summarily exiled, I was not allowed to
practise; but as there was no other lawyer in the region, people
came and confided their troubles to me.” (Collected Works, Vol.
33, p. 295.)